After years of work, hackers have finally managed to unlock the PS4 hardware with an exploit that lets the system run homebrew and pirated PS4 software. In a somewhat more surprising discovery, those hackers have also unlocked the ability to run many PS2 games directly on the console, using the same system-level emulation that powers legitimate PlayStation Classics downloads.

That's actually quite useful. Too bad this requires hacking and cracking, instead of it simply being a legitimate option. I have quite a few PS2 games I'd love to play directly on my PS4, instead of having to buy remasters.

Fair enough. As a matter of policy, if I can't play it on commodity hardware with some degree open-source emulation insulating the closed-source game from the platform, I just don't play it at all.

(At minimum, Wine or a container to ensure that stuff written for old x86 is more or less guaranteed to work on much newer x86... like the 16-bit Windows games I still play.)

Even with that restriction, I already have more entertainment than I know what to do with and that gap is only growing.

(Plus, it gives me the freedom to swap in whatever controller I want. For example, an original DualShock for PSX, the brand new Gamecube controller I bought from Japan during the Wii era, or one of my 360 controllers. I've actually been playing Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP with a SNES controller.)